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I'm Damaris. I have a soulmate, three kids, two citizenships, one full time job. I don't have a lot of time, a perfectly clean house, or a stylish wardrobe. Around here we tend to focus on the positive, so please ignore the mess, the sporadic posting, and all the little imperfections. We just take it one day at a time. One kiss at a time. One idea at a time. This blog is a glimpse of my heart, of what I love and cherish most. It just so happens that most of it revolves around the greatest thing on earth; food!

posted on: Friday, September 13, 2013

My motto is to think positive, roll up my sleeves and get things done. I'm not a huge complainer because as they say, there's no problem so bad that complaining about it won't make it worse. Complaining is unproductive and I don't have time to be unproductive. But lately, oh man, I have incarnated into Debbie Downer. Ask me how I'm doing and I will reply, in the verge of tears, about how I just can't do it.

A couple of month ago I committed myself to organizing food for a big church event. It's a luau and we're planning on feeding 1000 people. I had no idea what I was getting into. "Sure I can organize the food." And a small army to cook it. And another small army to serve. And another small army to get the food on the tables, help with prep, help with distributing food, unload the truck, pick up the pig in the next town over, find someone who can use a machete to cut the pig, make sure all the dancers have a plate of food, and so many other things that have fallen through the crack I'm just going to pretend they never existed in the first place.

Let's just make it very clear that I cannot organize food for 1000 people. I thought I could but I can't. Christian has been helping, of course, and a couple of weeks ago when I was in the verge of a panic attack I decided to ask for some extra help. I've been hoping that someone will call me up and say "hey we found someone else to organize this, thanks for trying but we found someone better." Of course that hasn't happened and it won't happen. Our church doesn't function like that, not because there isn't anyone better to do this (I'm convinced anyone would be better at it) but because people don't step in and take charge, they help you out instead, so that the burden blessing of service is not taken away from you

Yesterday when the Costco truck delivered five huge pallets of food and I was freaking out about how the aluminum pans they sent us were the wrong size and how all the doors to the church are too small and impossible to get pallets in, and how the watermelons needed to be carried in one by one... at that moment four missionaries came, put everything in the kitchen and cultural hall, put the watermelons in the shade until we could find people to carry it all in, put 250lbs of chicken in the car and drove it to another member's house who has an extra fridge and just got it done. We're talking about 18 and 19 year old boys here. They got their sh*t done! All this while I was still paralyzed by the wrong sized aluminum pans.

Then at night we had to distribute 150lbs of rice and 200lbs of pork and the cake. Ughhh.... the cake. One person showed up took all 60 boxes of cake mixes, the guava juice, eggs, oil, and said she had it covered. Everything is covered. People showed up picked up their pork threw in 20 cups of rice and said they would get it done. The 100lbs of dried macaroni also got distributed and the young men who brought in the 20 watermelons from the parking lot said that they would show up on saturday and cut up the watermelons too and promised me they would help serve food.

People are amazing! All around me people are being amazing, rallying together, cooking an insane amount of food, helping me organize, calling each other, printing out recipes, and watching my kids. And then I go to my friends house who's a chiropractor and he takes one look at me and says "lay down" and gives me the best adjustment of my life that evaporated my migraine away while his wife made dinner for my kids at 8:30pm when they were ready to put their two small girls to bed. Hummm... I just came to borrow your crock pot and you feed my family and healed my migraine? Dang!

It's only begun. There's still so much to do. Christian is making gallons and gallons of guava glaze. Tomorrow I'm making 40lbs of cream cheese frosting. Tonight I'm setting up 5 crock pots in the church to make one round of pulled pork and then early in the morning going in and making another round. Meanwhile we have 25 people making pulled pork in their homes. This is such a huge event, run by unprofessionals, who are dripping with children, commitments, and no extra time. You know, church folks.

Yesterday as I watched things unfold and get done and people serving all around me, even Debbie Downer me couldn't help but smile. Service is amazing. It's really hard. But it's amazing.

If you're wondering what we're serving here's the menu

kalua pig

BBQ pig

teriyaki chicken

Rice

kumala sweet potato with coconut caramel sauce

macaroni salad

guava cake

fruit

You should come. This is a free event and I would love to serve you some food!